Grain & Feed Manager - Managers Forum

[Chris Clukey]

Today at the GFAI show in Peoria, we had a great time, did a lot of business and learned a lot. Since we're changing venues tomorrow (the remaining events will be held at the nearby Holiday Inn), let me say before we move on that the Peoria Convention Center staff has done a great job; they're helpful, attentive and have a great facility. They and GFAI made sure we all ate very well.

Besides the meeting, the centerpiece of day two was the seminars. The two I personally attended were very informative. John Lee of GFAI and Brian Bothast from OSHA covered safety awareness topics, with John reviewing the tragic details of the three grain industry fatalities in Illinois in 2007. There's a little more about that subject in the thread I'll post in the safety section shortly.

The other session I attended was titled "Who is Your Marketing Staff?" Engaging and funny speaker Jack McQuellon from Caterpillar spoke on the effect the entire organization can have on the marketing image of the company, giving concrete examples from real companies and tips on how to turn a bad situation around.

You may recall in my post last night I said that the Trackmobile/Wiese Planning and Engineering booth was the best of the show. Now, I was impressed when the Trackmobile folks brought a model railroad layout with a HO scale model of one of their vehicles (which can travel on road surface or a railroad track), but this time they went all out and brought a 16 ton Model 4150 TM to the show. The 4150 is powered by a 5.9 liter turbocharged Cummins diesel, and it is a burly piece of machinery. In addition, they displayed a Ford F-750 that's been built up to serve as a maintenance vehicle for companies that use the Trackmobile vehicles. Among other things it has a crane rated at 10,000 pounds and a hydraulic pressurization system so you can power the hydraulics on a trackmobile from the truck. Dave Howard of Trackmobile and Jeff Yates from Wiese were as friendly and knowledgable as you could ask two guys to be.

A sixteen ton visual aid...how do you beat that?